Icons are well known in the art of graphical user-interfaces for control of an information processing system. An icon is a small pictorial representation of some larger set of information. An icon provides graphical information in a condensed format about contents or status of the underlying system. Icons are designed to trigger, through visual perception, operator concepts that communicate the contents or operation of the system in a quick manner. The system is accessed or operated upon through actuation of the icon.
An example of a controller unit for a home entertainment system is the Stage 3 Controller unit of Kenwood, described in Kenwood's publicly available manual "STAGE 3/Setting up your KC-Z1 Controller", 1996. The control unit includes a hand-held controller with a touch screen functionality for the GUI. The GUI provides a large number of icons that correspond to a large number of system functionalities. The functionalities are activated through the icons on the touch screen. The GUI is user-programmable to select the icons that should be present in the main menu and those that should not. In addition, the control modes (e.g., IR control codes, balancing audio speaker system) of the components thus selected can be programmed.
Icons in general are meant to convey information to the user in a quick manner through an appropriate graphical representation. However, if a large number of icons are presented at any of a variety of levels in a hierarchy of icons, the user has to actually read, i.e., decipher, the screen's information content to locate the desired functionality. As a result, the user-friendliness of the system control aspects can easily be degraded if too much information is presented in too many different icon-arrangements. A drawback of the prior art control unit discussed above is the inconsistency regarding the locations of the icons that require the user to actually study and decipher the menu items displayed, in order to find the desired functionality.